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Where Did Cain's Wife Come From?
#32101
04/28/04 12:50 AM
04/28/04 12:50 AM
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Where did Cain's wife come from?
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Re: Where Did Cain's Wife Come From?
#32102
04/28/04 04:02 AM
04/28/04 04:02 AM
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She was his sister, or niece, or great-niece, or some such close relative.
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Re: Where Did Cain's Wife Come From?
#32103
04/28/04 06:18 AM
04/28/04 06:18 AM
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 1,664
Plowing
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Since we are not give a time-table by Moses when he wrote the Genesis, we cannot assume that Cain's marriage was an incestial one, and since the Lord had very strict taboos against marriages of this kind, I assume that Cain's story is hundreds of years beyond the banishment from Eden. Human progenity was up until 50 years ago very abundant, normal families of 10 or more common just a century and ahalf ago. How much more in Cain and Abel's day. Consider: we are Not told: 1.that they were Adam and Eve's only children 2.when the story happened 3.how large families were to those with much purer human powers than today.
Cain's wife was a very distant relative....not as distant as your wife...but we are all children of Adam and Eve.
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Re: Where Did Cain's Wife Come From?
#32104
04/28/04 06:45 AM
04/28/04 06:45 AM
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Active Member 2011
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Joined: May 2002
Posts: 3,965
Sweden
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quote: Originally posted by Ikan: Since we are not give a time-table by Moses when he wrote the Genesis, we cannot assume that Cain's marriage was an incestial one, and since the Lord had very strict taboos against marriages of this kind, I assume that Cain's story is hundreds of years beyond the banishment from Eden.
Cain's wife was a very distant relative....not as distant as your wife...but we are all children of Adam and Eve.
Doesnt this reasoning only put the problem further away? While it may be true in the specific case of cain, could it possibly be true for all of the marriages back then? Ikan, Adams first grandchild, where both of its parents adams children?
/Thomas
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Re: Where Did Cain's Wife Come From?
#32105
04/28/04 11:10 AM
04/28/04 11:10 AM
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Thinking about it logically -- somewhere, sometime, somebody had to marry their sibling. Otherwise, the only people on the face of the earth would have been Adam, Eve, and their children. For Adam and Eve to have grandchildren, at least two of their children had to get together and reproduce. There's no other way it could have happened. Unless Adam had relations with one of his daughters, or Eve with one of her sons. And that's not something God would approve! ([edit] It'd be adultery, just for starters...)
It is possible that Cain waited for generations to marry some more distantly-related woman -- but if so, where did that woman come from? Again we're right back at square one. That more distant relative had to be the descendant of a sibling union somewhere along the line, whether Cain himself was involved in a sibling union or not.
Back then there wouldn't have been the restriction against sibling marriages, because the gene pool wasn't corrupted as it would become later on, since sin was a new phenomenon and its effects hadn't had time to snowball so much. Even as far along as Abraham's time, he married his half-sister Sarah without condemnation or ill effect. And that was after the gene pool had been narrowed down again to those proceeding from Noah's family.
The first Bible record of a taboo against marrying one's sibling that I can find doesn't appear until Moses' time -- Lev. 18 & 20. Are there any earlier ones? [ April 28, 2004, 08:46 AM: Message edited by: John ]
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Re: Where Did Cain's Wife Come From?
#32106
04/28/04 01:07 PM
04/28/04 01:07 PM
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 1,664
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Good points, gents. Never thought of it like that. But I find this sort of question sorta kin to gnat straining. What next? The age old question about Adam's navel?
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Re: Where Did Cain's Wife Come From?
#32107
04/28/04 02:02 PM
04/28/04 02:02 PM
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SDA Charter Member Active Member 2019
20000+ Member
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 22,256
Southwest USA
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During family worship the other day my wife and I were reading through Genesis, and we asked the same question that has been asked here. We noticed that by the time Cain killed Abel there were already alot of people scattered abroad, which made it necessary for God to mark Cain to protect him against future revenge and retaliation after he had to leave home.
But the Genesis account is written in such a way that it gives the impression there were only four people alive when Cain killed Abel. But obviously there were already alot of people living all over the place by then. Adam was 130 years old when Eve gave birth to Seth, whom Eve considered to be a replacement for Abel.
It seems very unlikely that in 130 years Adam and Eve only produced 3 boys. I imagine her being pregnant and giving birth every year 700 or 800 years. And in turn her off spring doing the same thing from the time they were 20 or so years old. Under such circumstances by the time Cain killed Abel, which was probably 129 years after Adam and Eve were created, there would have been hundreds and thousands of people on the earth.
But why didn't Moses, when he wrote Genesis, mention all the other children Adam and Eve produced before Cain and Abel were born? and their children, and grandchildren, etc.? Also, the geneological record in the Bible leads one to believe Seth was Adam's first born. Why?
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Re: Where Did Cain's Wife Come From?
#32108
04/28/04 09:27 PM
04/28/04 09:27 PM
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I guess Moses only mentioned the ones that are important to world history, or to the history of the people of God. Cain and Abel were important because they were involved in the first murder. Moses recounts human lineage through Seth because all other lineages were wiped out in the Flood -- Noah was descended from Seth, and therefore every human who's lived since the Flood is descended from Seth too. Including Jesus.
The Jewish historian Josephus said that tradition had Adam and Eve producing 33 sons and 23 daughters. We don't know if that's actually true, but it's sure plausible. God did tell them to "be fruitful and multiply," and they lived a long time.
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Re: Where Did Cain's Wife Come From?
#32109
04/29/04 04:35 AM
04/29/04 04:35 AM
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Posts: 1,664
Plowing
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Re: Where Did Cain's Wife Come From?
#32110
04/29/04 11:47 AM
04/29/04 11:47 AM
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You mean whether he had one or not; or whether it was or innie or outie? Maybe God made "faux" belly-buttons for him and Eve so they wouldn't look different from their kids. Or maybe He didn't give them belly-buttons, so they'd stand out as being the Mother and Father of all living. I reckon we'll have to wait for the first resurrection for the answer to any of that! They'll be there. Let's make sure we are.
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